I've suggested (& published in 21 journal papers) a new theory called quantised inertia (or MiHsC) that assumes that inertia is caused by relativistic horizons damping quantum fields. It predicts galaxy rotation, cosmic acceleration & the emdrive without any dark stuff or adjustment. My Plymouth University webpage is here, I've written a book called Physics from the Edge and I'm on twitter as @memcculloch

Thursday, 14 July 2016

LEMdrive?

It would be good to test MiHsC directly with an experiment. One proposal I made in a paper in 2013 (see reference) was to try to damp Unruh waves on one side of an object so that the Unruh waves that impact it on the other side push it along. The problem is that Unruh waves are lightyears long for normal low accelerations, and you'd have to accelerate/spin a disc very fast to make Unruh waves short enough so they can be damped by standard technology. Accelerating heavy discs is problematic.

Since then I've shown that MiHsC seems to predict the emdrive fairly well, and this implies that MiHsC also modifies the collective inertial mass of photons (McCulloch, 2016). The logical conclusion is, instead of using heavy discs, why not rotate light in a similar way? The method would be as follows: put photons into a fibre-optic loop (see the white loop in the diagram) and put a metal baffle on one side (the grey rectangle).

The photons will circle around the loop at light speed so that their acceleration will be huge and the Unruh waves they see will be of a similar size to the loop, and their electromagnetic component might therefore be damped by putting a metal shield on the left of the loop (the grey rectangle). That means there will be more Unruh waves hitting the fibre-optic loop from the right (more orange colour) than from the left (less orange) so the loop should move left. It rolls down a gradient in the Unruh radiation field.

I've done a simple calculation, and shown that if 2 Watts of power is put into the loop as photons, and if the loop has a Q factor of 10^6 then the thrust should be something like 21 mN multiplied by the efficiency of the damper in damping Unruh radiation (which I do not know, but the emdrive suggests might be close to one). This would be a kind of emdrive using light, not microwaves. A LEMdrive?

30 comments:

You could test with a fiber coil with one to many windings plus a fiber amplifier.https://www.rp-photonics.com/tutorial_fiber_amplifiers6.html

Since you would not care about data noise but only signal strength the,setup could be made a lot more effective regarding power to weight.Possibly the LEMP would be ten to hundred times lighter than the EMdrive at equivalent signal output.

A fiber-optic loop is by definition reflective of photons, keeping them within the fiber. This reflectivity should also affect any Unruh radiation emitted by those photons, at least at some wavelengths, and that should have some effect (perhaps major) on thrust computations.

Nevertheless, it would be an interesting (and cheap!) experiment to run.

This is a great idea for testing your hypothesis, and would obviously have many practical applications if it works. It would probably be much easier to test than the EM Drive.

I do have some questions. Wouldn't the proximity of the Earth and/or other metal to the fiber loop in your testing environment (e.g., metal building materials) potentially provide shielding of the Unruh waves? Would the distance between the shield and loop be expected to make a difference?

KAP: True: internal reflections would produce Unruh waves too. The damper would need to be tuned to damp the Unruh wavelength due to the acceleration of the looped motion (placed at the antinodes of the wave).

Parapraxis: Other metal in the vicinity should also have an effect. The trick would be, as I said above, to put the damper at the anti-nodes of the Unruh waves associated with the acceleration due to the main looping motion: so at 1/4 and 3/4 of a wavelength away.

Jack Cole: Good point, c would be reduced in the fibr-optic. Interestingly, 0.7c would boost the predicted thrust (F~PQpi/c), but would not effect the wavelength of the Unruh waves or the position of the damper.

>The best option would be to have a loop for the photons to go around many thousands of timesOr perhaps a stack of thin sheets ( squares ) where light could bounce from one edge to the other?Basically to form a volume with thousands of layers.The light would zig zag from one side to side on each layer before waterfalling / reflecting from one layer to the next.In such a sandwich design you could either have one metal (Unruh) barrier at the top.Or each layer could have its own barrier.With barriers at each level you might create gaps matching the light reflections using numbers of Pi to avoid Unruh cancellation in the vertical plane from walls shadowing through the layers in the stack.

To keep things simple a fiber spiral could be used to approximate a disc shape.Add a metal barrier at one side of the disc and send light through with a loop back at the other side.Multiple discs could be added to create a stack.

I'm afraid, that the actual model of EMDrive will be more complex than this theory and it must consider the yield of recombined photons polarized with reflection - which is something, which involves the geometry of cavity between others. I've also problem with explanations of local forces based on distant informational horizons (including gravity), no matter how well it may fit some experimental results.

By the way, about unruh waves, is it only EM wave, and not other kind of particles, bosons, fermions-pairs ?of course many of those are local (W/Z, gluons) or interacting quickly (charger fermions, neutrons) , maybe that is why it seems EM "mirrors" are most importants ?maybe unruh neutrinos pairs are to be considered?

Zephir: the way I have applied MiHsC to the emdrive is an approximation, but a reasonable one given the large uncertainties in the data. A full treatment needs a 'waves in cavity' model which I do not have.

Regarding non-local influences, note that the phase speed of monochromatic (Unruh) waves is not limited to the speed of light.

Very different. Woodward's theory, as far as I understand it, is based on higher order effects derived from general relativity and predicts transient mass fluctuations in objects absorbing energy while accelerating, among other things.

MiHsC is built by combining quantum mechanics and special relativity in a new way, and gets rid of the need for gravity (GR). So the two theories are very different.

Nevertheless, some of Woodward's experiments look to me like they might be explained by MiHsC, but I haven't looked at it in detail, for various reasons.

Alas, to energize a closed fiber loop, you need a pump combiner, of which the efficiency is about 95%. You'll lose half of your power after 13 times around the loop.

(see http://www.dkphotonics.com/product/2X1-Pump-Combiner.html)

I don't think you are going to get a Q of 10^6 from any available optical cable components. I suspect if you take a 100m cable and loop it with a diameter of 1/2 meter (200 turns) along with a good pump combiner you might get a Q of 2000 or so.

Wouldnt a Fabry-Pérot interferometer detect the perturbation of the photons? (lots of bounces) Basically just move the shield over the top of the device, if Unruh radiation perturbs the photons you should see a change in the interference pattern. My physics is too rusty to trust my calculation.

One of the few sites ive seen real physics brainstorming without fear of looking stupid or "out of the mainstream" kudos. For some of these ideas can't you plug in the variables with comsol and determine if their is a useful effect? On an unrelated topic, I saw where it was claimed that many of the black holes are aligned. 1. Do you agree that they are and 2. If the are, what would be some of the theories that would account for that phenomena?

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